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Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and times - and this is the worst of all - before we have new ones.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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Georg C. Lichtenberg
Age: 56 †
Born: 1742
Born: July 1
Died: 1799
Died: February 24
Astronomer
French Moralist
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Scientist
University Teacher
Writer
København
Principles
Libraries
Worst
Acquaintance
Times
Pair
Time
Etc
Pairs
Worn
Outgrow
Library
Acquaintances
Ones
Trousers

More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

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I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one’s opponents with arguments printed in books. It is not to do that, therefore, that I have taken up my pen, but merely so as to annoy them, and to bestow strength and courage on those on our own side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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One has to do something new in order to see something new.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Ambition and suspicion always go together.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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The feeling of health can only be gained by sickness.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Never trust a man who lays his hand on his heart when he assures you of anything.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears...as easily as we open and shut our eyes.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Honor is infinitely more valuable than positions of honor.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Ideas too are a life and a world.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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The excuses we make to ourselves when we want to do something are excellent material for soliloquies, for they are rarely made except when we are alone, and are very often made aloud.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Marriage, in contrast to the flu, starts with a fever and ends with the chills.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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No despotism is so formidable as that of a religion or a scientific system.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Doubt everything at least once, even the sentence Two times two is four.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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One use of dreams is that, unprejudiced by our often forced and artificial reflections, they represent the impartial outcome of our entire being.
Georg C. Lichtenberg